about.
Redesigning Rewards Around Customer Value
RBC Avion was underperforming, not from lack of value, but from friction. Customers couldn’t track their points, couldn’t find ways to use them, and rarely moved beyond a single redemption - turning a flagship offering into a quiet liability.
By moving the conversation from "clean up the screens" to "rebuild the customer's relationship with their points", it helped to provide the work a north star that every downstream decision could ladder back to.
approach.
Three decisions shaped the work: treating Rewards as its own product with a distinct and more engaging identity, designing for the full journey by making earning feel visible and rewarding, and creating multiple entry points through partner integration - shifting the experience from bank-led structure to customer intent and emotion.
results.
01 Make value tangible.
Every earning moment became a small celebration: a clear balance and weekly tracking that turned points into visible progress, not abstract math.
02 Make accumulation visible.
Pending and available points were separated, with a persistent balance always in view. You should never have to hunt for what you’ve earned.
03 Make redemption frictionless.
The Rewards Store got a distinct, off-brand color system to signal the “spending zone,” while cross-links between partners turned each redemption into the start of another.
Points stopped being math and started being progress. Customers could see what they'd earned, track it without hunting, and move from a single redemption into the next - turning a flagship program that read as a quiet liability into one customers could actually feel, trust, and use.
The deeper shift was organizational: "value visibility" gave every team - copy, merchandising, partnerships - one north star to design against.
